Russian President Vladimir Putin has been slow to respond to the new offensive attacks carried out by Ukraine, and reports are that that could cost him support in the region.
Ukraine pushed into the Kursk region starting August 6. In the process, they forced thousands of civilians to evacuate, while taking hundreds of prisoners and seizing various villages.
Russia was wholly unprepared for the offensive attack, and reports are that the country is now considering drafting conscripts to fight back against some of the most battle-hardened units that Ukraine has.
To this point, Putin has tried to downplay the Ukrainian offensive, which is par for the course for how he has responded to such incidents during his time in charge of the country.
That being said, the Washington Times reported this week that Putin appeared to look uneasy during a televised meeting held August 12 with other members of his security staff.
At one point, Putin even cut off the acting governor of the region when he started to list the different settlements that Ukraine had seized. The president as well as his loyal officials started to refer to “the events in the Kursk region” as just a “situation” or “provocation.”
State media outlets naturally followed suit. They showed some of the evacuees standing in long lines to get aid, or giving blood.
Putin’s big mantra during the 24 years he’s spent in power is that he is the only person who can guarantee that Russia has ongoing stability and security. That image that he’s tried to portray, though, has certainly been compromised by the events of the war with Ukraine, which is now going on nearly 31 months.
Ukraine’s forces have started to shell various Russian cities and target them with drone attacks. This comes after it looked like Russia was doing some damage in the eastern part of Ukraine.
The Washington Times report said that the country has begun purging officials in the Defense Ministry, charging some with corruption. Even some of the lower-level officers are now being arrested and charged with fraud.
One such person is Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Frolov, who said he’d “rather be in Kursk … than here,” as he was being led into a police station in Moscow in handcuffs recently.
Russian authorities are also beginning criminal cases targeting some other officials, and they’re also working to confiscate some land from some of the wealthiest people in the country who live just outside of Moscow near where Putin has a residence.
State media obviously pushes to support Putin and says that he has it among many of the country’s residents. But, how the country’s elite feel about Putin is up in the air.
Ekaterina Schulmann, who’s a scholar working at Berlin’s Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that Putin is very dependent on those wealthy people acquiescing with him.
As she explained:
“The calculation that’s going on in their heads 24/7 is whether the status quo is to their advantage or not.”
She added that after all these recent developments, they’re questioning “whether the old man is still an asset or already a liability.”
